My client arrived twenty minutes earlier than scheduled, which left me no real opportunity to study the case papers once I’d hurried Zara out of the room, and I went on to blunder our introduction from the start.
‘Mr Meadows?’ I offered my hand to the stocky black fellow waiting alongside two women in the reception area downstairs. ‘Elliot Rook.’
The man returned a firm grip, sealing it into a clasp with his second hand. ‘Delroy Meadows, Meadows Motors, Hackney Wick. Pleased to meet you.’
‘Delroy …’ I glanced down at his hands and noticed oil in the cracks. ‘I thought … You’re not Charlie?’
Behind him, one of the accompanying women cleared her throat. ‘Mr Rook, Delroy is Charli’s brother. I’m Lydia Roth, solicitor for the case. This is Charli …’
With one hand the solicitor gestured to the third in their trio, and I felt heat prickling my features. ‘Of course,’ I said, abruptly switching the aim of my hand like a clumsy cannon. ‘Charli? Is that short for Charlotte?’
‘No.’ She nervously wiped her palm dry on her denim jacket before offering it in return, but it was clammy again by the time she took my hand. ‘Just Charli.’
‘That’s all right,’ her brother assured me, ‘she’s used to it by now, aren’t you, Charli?’
She neither agreed nor disagreed.
I led the three of them up in single file through the tight staircase that seemed built for people half my size, and I didn’t get a good look at the client until I was back in my room with the door shut behind us.
It would be ignorant to say that Charli Meadows didn’t look like the ordinary criminal – I had dealt with lawbreakers of all shapes and sizes during my decades at the Bar – but, in appearance at least, she certainly challenged the misconception of an average. Like her brother, she was early thirties, black; they shared the same curved outlines to their features and spoke with comparable east London accents, but the physical similarities between the siblings seemed to end there.
Charli Meadows looked used up. Many defendants do, with the seriousness of charges often measurable by the radius of shadow around the eyes. Some look positively proud of themselves, and others don’t even bother to hide their dumb, smug smirks, but Charli Meadows was not one of those. She’d put effort into her outfit, enough to look presentable even in a simple denim jacket and clean white shirt, but nothing that spoke of spare cash hidden in the secret places of her home. The rings she wore were costume-grade, the stones in her ears too dull to be diamonds. There were no whites left along her fingernails, and her mascara was uneven. The lines around her mouth looked as if they’d been loaned from a woman twice her age. Here was a picture of despondency.
By comparison, her solicitor Lydia Roth moved with the sweeping confidence of a high-class professional. She was more than comfortable in her own fair, almost ashen, skin, and wore her strawberry-blonde hair in a short, stylish cut that looked as expensive as her designer glasses. As she took a seat, I found myself checking with what I hoped was discretion: no wedding ring.
She, Charli and I sat down around my desk, but the brother, Delroy Meadows, paced the room with a heavy tread. He selected books at random from my shelves, turned them in his hands and then clunked them down again. He seemed restless. Unsettled. I wondered if he was nervous, though he didn’t strike me as an easily unnerved figure.
I flicked through the case papers, imitating familiarity. ‘Miss Meadows,’ I said, ‘while I’m sure you’re well aware of the charges against you by now, perhaps we ought to start from the top to avoid any confusion going forward. I’ll be representing you in your upcoming trial. Now, you’ve –’
‘You been doing this long?’ It was her brother, who was off to the left weighing my battered copy of Crime and Punishment in his open palm. ‘We saw you in the news back at Christmas. That’s why we wanted you, but they told us you were booked up, didn’t they, Charli?’
I waited to see if she’d respond – she glanced to her solicitor as if for a cue, but Roth didn’t say a word – before I replied. ‘I’ve been doing this quite long enough to be of use to your sister, I think.’ Turning back to her. ‘You are being indicted for bringing prohibited List A items into prison, contrary to Section 40B of the Prison Act 1952.’
‘Drugs,’ her brother remarked, shaking his head as he plonked the novel back onto the wrong shelf, face down, without looking at me. ‘Let’s tell it like it is, Mr Rook. They’re calling her a smuggler. Honestly, does my sister look like a drug dealer to you? Does she?’
I caught a rolling glance from Lydia Roth, sneaking out over the frame of her glasses, which suggested that she’d already had her own fair share of these interruptions.
‘Honestly?’ I replied. ‘Some years ago, I had a client in her late eighties who had been selling cocaine from her Tuesday-evening bridge club. An otherwise charming old lady, I assure you. She carried a flathead screwdriver in her stocking for protection. I’m not quite sure what a drug dealer is supposed to look like.’
‘It’s crazy,’ Delroy went on, rapping a knuckle against my wig tin, apparently capable of dismissing any anecdote that failed to support his opinion. ‘This whole thing, ridiculous. She doesn’t look like a drug dealer to me.’
By now Charli’s eyes were moving around the office, disconnected, as if this was all a film to which she was nothing more than a passive observer. I leaned into her sight, fighting for attention, avoiding the urge to rudely snap my fingers in her face. ‘First, I’d like to discuss your role as prison officer at …’
‘HMP Wormwood Scrubs,’ she said, monotonal.
‘Really?’ There must’ve been surprise in my voice, but nobody seemed to notice.
‘Not an officer,’ her brother added, swiping his hands together as if he was checking for dust. ‘Operational Support Grade. They call it Band 2, one level below officer, which is Band 3.’
‘Operational Support.’ I reached for a pencil and then scribbled the words onto my legal jotter. ‘What does that consist of?’
‘General staff work,’ Charli said. ‘Portal duties like gates and doors, anything with locks … Working the control room … Processing and escorting visitors … Wall patrols … Driving duties … Censoring correspondence and checking prisoners’ possessions … Food deliveries …’ She took a slow breath. ‘All sorts.’
‘Four years she’s kept that place running,’ her brother said, ‘haven’t you, Charli?’
Charli blinked.
‘The Scrubs was your first prison?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You worked there full-time?’
A nod.
‘Good salary?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘The money. How are your earnings?’
She hesitated and glanced again to Lydia Roth, who said patiently, ‘It’s one of the first things the prosecution will look at.’
Relenting, Charli rubbed her hands together; the cheap jewellery made a hollow, rattling sound. ‘Twenty-three thousand before tax.’
I noted it down, which she regarded with some disapproval. ‘You’re the only earner in the house?’
‘Yes.’
‘And whereabouts do you live?’
‘Walthamstow.’ Her brother answered for her, burying his hands into his overalls and rocking on his heels behind her. ‘That’s an hour to and from the prison every day.’
‘You live with her?’ I asked sceptically.
‘Me? No. Just her and three kids. Single mum, different dads.’ He didn’t say it cruelly, but there was a sharp enough edge behind it. Once again, his sister didn’t seem to notice.
‘No partner?’ I asked. ‘No boyfriend?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Just me.’
‘Do you rent or own your home?’
‘On twenty-three grand a year? What do you think?’
‘If you could just answer the questions, please.’
‘Rent.’
‘And how old are your children?’
‘Twelve, eight and two.’
I jotted the numbers down. ‘You pay for childcare?’
‘No.’ She watched me work on the notepad. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Calculations. The prosecution is going to perform a very public autopsy of your finances, and the first move will be to weigh the cost of keeping three children and a rented property in the Waltham Forest borough against your annual income. If there are discrepancies to be found, Miss Meadows, then they will do their utmost to find them and use those to speculate over alternative means of income. I’m just trying to ease you into how that might feel in a court full of strangers.’
Her brother snorted. ‘They’ll argue that she earns an impossible wage, but they’re part of the same system that pays her a peanuts salary to begin with. Then they’re going to accuse her of being a crook because she’s somehow managed to make ends meet. Everybody knows that drugs are rife in that place. They’re everywhere. Charli’s being scapegoated because a few junkies kicked the bucket the other month. I know it, you know it, and the prosecution know it for sure.’
Patiently, I placed the pencil down on my jotter. ‘Mr Meadows, while I appreciate you coming here to support your sister, unless you plan on climbing into the witness box and speaking for her in the courtroom then I suggest that she gets into the habit of answering for herself.’ He rolled his eyes and went back to pacing. I continued. ‘Being staff, you’ll know that prohibited articles within Her Majesty’s prisons are graded according to their seriousness and classified as List A, B or C articles. List C covers the likes of food, drink, tobacco and clothing, and carries a maximum penalty of a fine after summary trial. List B is more along the lines of alcohol and mobile phones, can be tried either way, and the penalty on indictment is imprisonment not exceeding two years or a fine. Offences regarding List A articles, however, which include weapons, firearms, explosives and drugs, are triable on indictment only and carry a sentence of up to ten years’ imprisonment.’
I couldn’t tell if she’d nodded or just trembled. She must’ve known the outcome by now, but hearing such things aloud always lent them serious weight.
‘They found the drugs in your car, correct?’
‘Allegedly,’ her solicitor said, cutting in and raising her hand to object. It reminded me of characters in those stylish American legal thrillers, and I briefly wondered if she was deliberately trying to emulate them. She certainly looked the part. ‘The prosecution claim that our client had been smuggling the contraband into the grounds from her vehicle outside. A search was conducted using dogs, and the illicit material was apparently discovered concealed beneath the spare tyre in the boot of her car. Synthetic cannabinoids. Spice, a Class B substance.’
‘Spice. Now, I may be wrong,’ I said, ‘but I was under the impression that one of the main reasons for this Spice’s popularity in prisons was that it couldn’t be detected by canines.’
The solicitor nodded. ‘That used to be the case, and it’s still early days, but they’ve recently managed to train a handful of dogs across the country to identify it.’
‘And who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?’ I said. Nobody smiled.
‘It used to be a legal high,’ Delroy Meadows said bitterly, coming to rest and wrapping his hands over the back of his sister’s chair. ‘Spice! Used to sell it in the shops up in Camden, for God’s sake.’
‘Alcohol is still perfectly legal,’ I said, ‘but I wouldn’t recommend trying to carry a bottle of Jack into prison.’ I flicked through the case papers until I found the printed photographs of the evidence: a blue Vauxhall Corsa, 2000 model, sitting in the staff car park of the prison; a close-up of the open boot, contraband packed tightly underneath the spare tyre; the contraband itself, laid out on a table with a ruler alongside it, and then again on a set of scales; the images went on. ‘I’m confused – it looks like rolling tobacco.’ The pouches were standard Golden Virginia, their contents brown, leafy, recognisable in texture to any smoker. ‘It is rolling tobacco, isn’t it?’
‘Synthetic cannabinoids are typically designed to look like cannabis,’ the solicitor explained, ‘but they are actually just liquid chemicals spayed onto existing products. If it looks like cannabis, more often than not it’s actually a weed called marshmallow or another similar herb. Oregano, even. The ten pouches you see in those pictures are supposedly worth a total of up to ten thousand pounds on the prison market. The prosecution claims that it is tobacco, but drenched in the chemical and is, therefore, classified as synthetic cannabinoids.’
‘That’s interesting,’ I said slowly, a defence already forming in my mind. ‘I assume you went through some sort of professional training course prior to being hired, Miss Meadows?’
‘Yes,’ she replied quietly. ‘A two-week entry-level course at the Prison Service College in Rugby.’
I nodded, mostly to myself. ‘Which immediately contradicts a lack of mens rea on the whole, but I just wonder …’
‘Men’s what?’ she asked, straightening slightly.
‘Mens rea,’ I repeated. ‘The knowledge that you are, in fact, committing a crime. The Crown only has to prove that you knew you were conveying something prohibited into the prison, but it does not have to prove that you knew exactly what that item was in order to make a charge. In other words, whether you believed that this Spice was still a legal high or not would be irrelevant. You’ve done enough training by now to know what is and what isn’t allowed beyond those walls … But, if we could convince the jury that you genuinely believed you were smuggling regular tobacco onto the premises, which is only a List C article, then I think we may just have enough –’
‘But I didn’t,’ she interrupted. ‘I didn’t try to smuggle anything, I have no idea how it ended up there. I drive my children around in that car, Mr Rook. I pick up their friends. Why in God’s name would I … Why would I risk …’ She lost whatever stride she was finally beginning to gather and faded out to miserable silence.
‘I understand that this isn’t easy,’ I said, ‘but it’s going to be a lot more difficult in the courtroom. The prosecution will consider every possible scenario that might have put those drugs into that car, and they’re going to ensure that the answer always leads back to you. Who else uses your car? Anybody? Ever?’ She shook her head. ‘You have the only keys?’ A nod. ‘What about you, Mr Meadows? Didn’t you say you were a mechanic?’
He did a double take, startled by the query. ‘I make a damn reasonable living out of my own business, thank you very much. Who do you think is paying your fees?’
‘I didn’t mean to cause offence, Mr –’ I started, but he was off.
‘I haven’t touched that damn car since its MOT in December. You think it’s my fault she’s got herself into another one of life’s little messes? You want to see my annual turnover while you’re at it? Do my tax return, maybe?’
‘Not in the slightest.’ I raised my palms non-judgementally. ‘I’m just making the enquiries that those empanelled twelve will want to hear explained. It comes down to a simple enough question. How did ten thousand pounds’ worth of Spice end up in the boot of that car?’
Of course, nobody had the answer.
‘This is making me sick,’ Charli whispered. ‘Physically sick.’ When she buried one hand into the pocket of her jacket, I heard cigarettes rattling against cardboard, shaken by the tremor in her palm.
‘Perhaps now would be a good time for a short break?’ I suggested. ‘Some fresh air, and then we can go over this defence in more detail?’
‘Yeah,’ her brother added, moving one of his hands onto her shoulder, talking mostly to himself. ‘Come on, Charli. You’ve got to keep it together. Man’s just doing his job, you know what I mean? Just doing his job. Let’s go for a fag. Sort your head out. He’s only doing his job.’
She nodded, momentarily placing her own hand over his, and then followed his lead out of the room.
The solicitor stayed behind. She waited until the sound of the creaking staircase had completely faded beyond the door and then blew a mouthful of air.
‘Brothers,’ she said, pushing back into her chair until her spine cracked loudly. She crossed her legs and looked me up and down as if I’d only just materialised before her. ‘Elliot Rook. Corny, I know, but your reputation does precede you.’
‘Whereas yours doesn’t,’ I said. ‘I’m surprised we haven’t met before. I thought I knew everyone in the small world of London serious crime.’
‘I don’t do a lot of fraud. Nothing of the calibre you’re used to, anyway. Mostly drugs. A few murders here and there.’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘I’m independent.’ She tilted her head. ‘Entirely independent, in case you were wondering.’
I cleared my throat. ‘What are we looking at here … Miss … Ms …’
‘Call me Lydia,’ she insisted politely, inclining off to one side to stare straight past me and check her reflection in the window. Whatever she saw there gave her a smile. ‘Do you spend much time down at the Scrubs, Elliot?’
‘Not lately,’ I replied, feeling strangely naked and disarmed; few people called me by my first name any more.
‘I work with a lot of clients there. Dozens. The place is a cesspit. Infested with cockroaches and rats, and I’m not talking about the convicts. Enough drugs to put Glastonbury to shame. You heard about the inmates who died there in January?’
‘Of course.’
‘Overdosed on a tainted batch of this Spice crap,’ she said. ‘The CPS actually considered manslaughter charges for Meadows, what with the drugs being found in her car the following week, but everybody knew damn well that there was no evidence to say she’d been in any way responsible for past supply, even if –’
‘It was that soon?’ I asked abruptly.
She blinked, adjusting her glasses. ‘Hmm?’
‘The date …’ I quickly rifled through my case papers until I found it. ‘Monday the fifteenth,’ I read. ‘They found the drugs in the vehicle on the fifteenth, and you say the deaths occurred a week before?’
‘Tuesday or Wednesday, I think. I’d have to double-check.’
‘Doesn’t that seem a touch expedient to you? Thirteen inmates die, causing a national scandal, and the Prison Service, which has famously struggled against the influx of drugs for years, somehow manages to put a stop to one of its suppliers within the week?’
‘Seems cogent enough to me.’ She shrugged. ‘Scandals mean searches. Increased security. If they were ever going to find anything, it makes sense that it would be then.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said, tapping the date on the paper with the end of my pencil. ‘Just strikes me as rather extraordinary that one of the staff members involved in security procedures, who has no doubt been briefed on such crackdowns, still chances smuggling more potentially lethal product through the gates within the week.’ I clicked my tongue, considering the client who was almost certainly chain-smoking below my window.
‘You believe her?’ She sounded surprised. ‘You think that she really didn’t know anything about the drugs?’
‘No. No, I suspect that she probably did, though that doesn’t matter. What I find most jarring is the risk involved. I’m interested in why she might have done it. Whether or not she had a choice at all.’
The solicitor cocked her head, causing her neck to stretch elegantly on one side. ‘You think she was coerced?’
‘I’d say there’s a strong possibility – either from outside the prison or within.’
‘It was suggested throughout the arrest interviews, but she’d never admit to it.’
‘Not many do.’
‘Plus, duress is a difficult defence without proof of an immediate threat. An extremely difficult defence.’
‘Yes, and still difficult even if we could prove the threat …’
I gazed into the empty chair beside the solicitor and took a moment more to deliberate our client. There really was no archetype, no ordinary criminal. We all built excuses to vindicate behaviour. I’d done it myself, during my own time in prison.
I was a convicted fraudster, but not because my hand had been forced at eighteen years old. Stealing had quite simply been easier than working – easy, that is, until I got caught.
But if Charli Meadows had been smuggling – and the supporting evidence seemed sound enough – then she was just a single link in a long chain. The fact that she hadn’t offered information on her suppliers in exchange for lenience suggested fear.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Lydia asked after I’d sat mutely for a while. She sounded genuinely interested. Her eyes burned green through the lenses of her glasses.
‘I was just thinking that it has been too long since I’ve been down to the Scrubs,’ I said. ‘I should probably start there. Get a feel for the place.’
‘Excellent.’ She opened her laptop, adjusted her glasses and began hitting keys. ‘I’ve got several clients on remand there at the minute, I could arrange for the two of us to go down on, well, let’s see –’
‘Ah, you needn’t worry about that,’ I told her quickly, waving a hand.
‘No?’ She looked up over her glasses. ‘Why’s that, Elliot?’
For another millisecond, I was disarmed again. ‘I’d prefer to make my own arrangements.’
‘Oh.’ The second audible full stop of the morning.
I didn’t want to tell her about Zara, or my chance of visiting the jail this afternoon.
I wasn’t even sure why.
The Meadows siblings returned a moment later, flooding the room with the smell of smoke, and when I looked into our client’s eyes, searching through her exhaustion for hints of truth, I was reminded of that sorry little bait dog. It was all I could do to refrain from getting up and going downstairs for a cigarette myself.